Air Force football coaching job one of three toughest in FBS

The following story was done by SB Nation and discusses the difficulty in coaching at a service academy. SB Nation feels that the three service academy jobs are the most difficult in the FBS.

Air Force, Army, Navy head coaches explain football's 3
hardest jobs

By Kevin Trahan, May 21 2014, 9:00a 19

America's service academies face tough recruiting restrictions
and still find success on the football field. SB Nation talked to head coaches
Ken Niumatalolo, Troy Calhoun, and Jeff Monken about adapting and contending
anyway.

In April,
when the NCAA changed its policy to allow for unlimited meals, college coaches
championed it as a success for student-athletes and as a potential benefit in
recruiting. But for Air Force head coach Troy Calhoun, it was just
another reminder of what he's up against.

"That doesn't pertain to us," he said of the
new rules.

Calhoun isn't bitter about the rule change. He knows it
benefits athletes at most schools and that it's necessary in a world more
focused on player welfare. And he knew in 2007, when he took the Air Force
Academy job, that he was signing up for one of the three toughest jobs in
college football.

At no other major football schools are recruits agreeing
to active military service when they sign to play football. At the academies,
physical training mandatory for a degree gets in the way of physical training
for football. And that's for the players who meet the height and weight
requirements for entry.

With these restrictions, among many others, it's a shock
that America's service academies can win any games in the top subdivision of
Division I. Because to win games, you have to recruit good players. And finding
good players with those restrictions is improbable, at best.

How do service academies recruit?

I posed that broad question to Calhoun, and his answer
started out simply enough: "I don't think our process is different than
anywhere else," he said.

On the surface, that's true. Calhoun and the coaches at
Army and Navy go out in search of the best football players in the country to
come to their schools, just like the coaches at every other Division I program.
But it comes with a caveat: "just, the filters that are involved are a lot
stronger."

Just a few of those filters:

Academics. At Air Force, prospective players need to
have at least a 3.5 high school GPA, a 25 on the ACT in all subjects, and a
minimum of a 1200 two-part SAT score. Requirements are similarly rigorous at
the other service academies. Lt. Col. Gaylord Greene, who works in admissions
at Army, said coaches will often encourage recruits to take more core courses,
since the school requires more of them for entry than most others do.

Height and weight requirements. They differ slightly
by academy, but at Air Force, a 6'4 applicant cannot weigh more than 221 pounds
for admission -- and must also not weigh more than that upon graduation. This
makes recruiting offensive linemen very difficult. "I'd love to have a
bunch of 320-pound guys with good feet," Calhoun said. "We've never
had a 285-pound kid, which is very small for a Division I offensive lineman. We
usually average 255 pounds with our offensive line."

Mandatory military service. Unlike players who sign
a normal scholarship tender, athletes at the service academies sign on to serve
in active military duty after college. As expected, that "is a turnoff for
a lot of kids," according to new Army head coach Jeff Monken.

Apply the academic filter, and suddenly the pool of
prospects shrinks. The academies are forced to recruit similar kids as
Stanford, Duke, Northwestern, and the Ivy League schools, yet none of those
schools have to also worry about the additional filters of weight limits and
mandatory military service.

"I bet out of our two-deep, we might only have two
that are even from this time zone," Calhoun said. "Which, that is
really absurd."

That sounds really nice: "we recruit
nationally." After all, that's what powerhouses like Notre Dame pride
themselves on. However, Notre Dame recruits nationally because its name has
enough cachet to pull players from anywhere; the Irish don't have to just stick
with the players in the Midwest. The academies recruit nationally out of
necessity, because they could barely fill out a team if they recruited their
geographic regions.

Even with a national recruiting plan, the academies
rarely beat out major-conference teams for players. And as Navy head coach Ken
Niumatalolo pointed out, even many lower-level FBS players think they can go to
the NFL. Whether that's true or not, it cuts the service academies out of the
picture for those players as well. So they tend to recruit against each other,
FCS schools, and maybe a MAC school every once in awhile.

Monken arrived at Army from FCS Georgia Southern this
year, and even though he jumped up a division, it might be tougher to get
players now.

"I think the service academies are the most
difficult places to recruit to in the nation," he said.

THE ACADEMIES ARE THE MOST DIFFICULT PLACES TO RECRUIT TO
IN THE NATION.

ARMY HEAD COACH JEFF MONKEN The recruiting rankings back
that up. According to 247 Sports, Air Force was the top-ranked service academy
in 2014, finishing 109th nationally. Army and Navy were 121st and 129th,
respectively, finishing among a group of FCS and low-level FBS schools. Only 10
of their collective 58 commits received three-star ratings. Star ratings
matter for football success, so the coaches at service academies need to be
creative in their recruiting approaches.

Since there is so much information in recruiting these
days, the academies can't really rely on fellow coaches to miss ready-made
prospects. Instead, they take chances on players they hope to develop.

Niumatalolo said his staff will look to identify
undersized offensive linemen, corners with 4.6-second 40-yard dash times, and
small defensive linemen who could turn into linebackers. It's an exhausting
process, but if coaches look hard enough, they can find enough players who fit
the very specific profiles. Once they find those players and get them to campus
for official visits, Niumatalolo claims 90 percent of them end up committing.

"Since we recruit all 50 states," he said,
"I believe there are enough student-athletes out there that have good
grades that are willing to serve their country after."

Adapting to the recruiting filters

The physical requirements at the service academies
dictate their on-field style. All three are known for running option offenses.
Navy, in particular, has become famous for perfecting the flexbone triple
option. Former Navy coach Paul Johnson brought it to Georgia Tech with
some success, with Monken a former assistant.

Because the academies can't have big offensive lines,
they rely on athletic linemen and option misdirection to create running lanes
and open up the field. The Midshipmen won a game in 2011 without
completing a pass, as did Monken's GSU against Florida in 2013. In the past six
years, all three academies have ranked in the FBS top four in rushing attempts
per game, along with Georgia Tech.